Random musings on life, death and technology

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Reversal recovery (part ix)

It’s now approaching 10 weeks since I had my ileostomy taken down, and finally it feels like I’m starting to see some progress. This ties in with a comment from my colleague Harry, who mentioned that it was about 3 months before he started to see real progress too.

Of course, things aren’t perfect yet. A long way from it to be brutally honest, but I’m now seeing a lot more days where I’m mostly in control and able to get on with life to varying extents. I’d like to think that mostly that’s down to my body finally starting to adapt to the changes that my surgeon has made to it, but there’s no doubt that I’ve also got a lot better at fiddling with my medicines and diet (I’ve been keeping a food diary) to reduce the problems too.

Unfortunately when things do go wrong, they really do go wrong quickly, and with a vengeance. At that point all I can do is increase my dose Loperamide and stay within running distance of the toilet. The Loperamide eventually gets things back under control, but usually means that things then swing the other way for the following couple of days, which can be equally unpleasant.

All of which brings me back to the question of when I’m going to be well enough to actually start working again. It’s certainly starting to look like a real possibility; given that IBM intend to restart me on part-time hours initially, and then slowly increase my hours and responsibilities over a two month period, I’d like to think that I ought to be able to start that process reasonably soon.

But that decision is still nearly a fortnight away, and although that gives me time for a bit more improvement, it’s ultimately for my doctors to make, with input from me, rather than the other way around.